[Closed] Feeling broken

It's very hot out there.

I sit behind an air-conditioned desk all day and I feel wobbly getting up from the sofa at home.

As above, it's pretty warm out.

Bike rides best undertaken before 8am or after 9pm at the moment.

12-15hrs a day

I've been doing this the last few weeks, sat on my arse at a desk and i'm absolutely ruined!  I would suggest that you've not got a great deal in the emergency energy bank and the heat has pushed you over the edge

I just don’t understand why it happing to me when I’ve been on my bike ,I know it’s been very hot physical working in it but never feel like I do when I’ve been on the bike

Is your work actually at a fairly low level of effort whereas you might be pushing it much more on your bike rides? I grew up on a Lakes farm so I'm not suggesting you aren't working hard, more that it's a sustainable level.

Might be worth using a HRM to make sure you aren't overdoing things. I had similar chronic tiredness and figured it was due to always riding as hard as I could, almost as if every ride was a race.

Most athletes seriously underestimate the need for rest and recovery, often to the detriment of their performance. I go away for 2 week trips to Africa when all I do is eat, drink and walk a few yards between hotel, car and office and I feel much stronger on the bike when I return, although the cardio takes a couple of rides to get back up to fitness.

Also, have you considered the possibility that you may have something like glandular fever? A blood test will show that up.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_mononucleosis

You can get low level sickness that can affect you like this without other symptoms, IME.

I'd say rest up, or do something really gentle for a week or so.

Are you dehydrated? That always makes me feel worse after a ride. After a usual ride (40-50 miles on or off-road, 5k climbing) I'm about 5lbs lighter in this weather. Can only be fluid loss (and associated minerals).

It could be so many things. Are you doing anything about electrolyte replacement during rides. Using chocolate milk / recovery drink / a protein/carbo mix snack immediately after finishing. Are you drinking enough generally? Are you sleeping well - a lot of recovery happens while you're sleeping. Are you riding hard on successive days and battering an already tired body?

I'd be throttling back in distance and intensity, maybe even taking some time off the bike. And booking an appointment with my GP to see if there's some sort of underlying cause.

Years ago I had a similar thing, ended up going in to see my GP and had some blood tests that suggested my potassium levels were low. I was fortunate in that my doctor was a triathlete and asked me some questions about how much I was training - erm, about six days a week - and what I was doing about electrolyte replacement - nothing. I'm now a lot more careful about fuelling during and after rides.

That said, I'm not great with heat and anything remotely hard in the current weather is properly draining.

I have a lot of sympathy.

This weekend has been an odd one: ride out with the kids on Saturday (say 40 miles at 10-12mph), then a 70-miler dawn ride with the grown-ups early on Sunday morning (say 70 miles at nearly 20mph). Felt absolutely fine afterwards so went out and did a 5 mile walk with the family before lunch about 90 minutes after getting back from the fast ride...and it very nearly killed me. I don't think I've ever felt so utterly spent as I did yesterday after finishing the walk and, in the end, I had to write the rest of the day off to just sit drooling in front of the telly. Fell better today, but glad I'm not doing a Roubaix stage! Personally, I put most of it down to food. I intentionally went out and rode yesterday with only a light breakfast, but then because the family didn't want to eat, didn't end up eating again until mid-afternoon. This, I think, was the root of the problem.

The one thing I've noted about my fellow riders is about how differently they handle different disciplines - 3 hours on a mountain bike for an experienced mountain biker like me doesn't bother me at all. But when I went mountain biking with one of my roady friends (who normally kicks my ass!) he reported that not only was he exhausted by the end, but that it took days and days for him to recover from a length of ride that he'd normally expect to shrug off in a couple of hours. I note that you're a farmer and I suspect that, were I to try your job, it would kill me within a week, but that doesn't automatically mean you'll have the stamina and fitness required to keep up with me on the bike - it's a different sort of fitness.

Have you considered a proper re-examination of your diet and fitness strategy? e.g. some longer, slower, lower intensity training rides to complement the shorter, high-intensity ones, coupled with a change in you pre and post ride food? The other one is to be much, much stricter about your water intake during this warm weather. Literally, pre-decide how much you will drink and make sure that you drink it, even though your body might not tell you it needs to. (I have this problem - I'm a rubbish drinker!)

Frustrating thing you are describing.

There could be 1000 reasons for it. And extremely difficult to find out. Sometimes the body needs some sort of minerals or similar and you are eating/drinking it in sufficient amounts but the body can't digest it proper. Means there is still a lack of it in the body and you feel fatigued - although eating/drinking properly.

One of my biking pals had this (lack of some vitamine in the blood / connected to the function of the gallbladder). He takes now some medicine and feels much better when doing sport. But took ages to find out.

I work 12 days on 2 days off I average 6-7 hours of sleep,gave up on the electrolytes as they seemed to give my kidneys a bit of gyp .try to get at least 35 miles in at least once a week between work and family life and like I said earlier one decent ride in the weekend I’m not working